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Comment by joejerryronnie | Hacker News Reader

Well, there goes the high salaries, flexible working hours, and generous RSU grants for tech employees. Have fun fighting and scraping for 2% raises, paying exorbitant union fees for questionable benefits, and dealing with the nepotism and personal politics of your union leaders. And thanks in advance for adding to the unfunded pension liability crisis.

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It would be valuable to provide some sources for your claim, because as-is this reads like propaganda.

Perhaps the causation is reversed, and industries with terrible working conditions and low raises tend to attract unions to empower the workers to change those conditions?

You know unionizing isn't something people do lightheartedly. A lot of planning and working goes into it, planning and working done by the folks who want to unionize. The idea that you only get benefits if you don't agitate your boss too much sounds pretty sad.

People don't join unions if they are going to be worse off materially.

>People don't join unions if they are going to be worse off materially.

Tell that to anyone whose workplace unionizes against their wishes and lives in a "closed shop" state. (Yes, closed shops are illegal, but agency fees lead to essentially the same thing).

Being forced to pay a fee to a union that does not represent you and that you did not vote to join is absolute bullshit.

You can say that about any job, union or non union. You don't join a job not knowing it's a union job. But in a non union workplace, if you don't like how things are you can change them. Good luck doing that without a union.

I am talking about places that turn into union jobs after you have been there a few years.

>People don't join unions if they are going to be worse off materially.

Of course they do. The difference is that they are tricked into thinking they won't be worse off by the union organizers pretending that it's unlikely everyone will completely lose their job.

So the logic goes, don't join a union or you'll lose you job?

How does that not sound coercive? A company saying "If you collectively bargain against us, we will punish you" sounds ok to you? You've been tricked out of collective bargaining by decades of anti-union propaganda, and now you're carrying water for capital.

All of which were, what, privileges bestowed upon workers by management in exchange for their not unionizing? Seems like they were pretty fragile, then.

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